So I’m not sure how this site has eluded me for so long, but I recently discovered InkShares.com. They are like Kickstarter.com or IndieGoGo.com, but once your book is crowdfunded enough they handle the editing, publishing, marketing, and distribution whereas KS & IG raise the money then you have to go find all that yourself. It’s a pretty cool idea… but is it actually viable?

InkShares pays a 50% royalty to their authors which sounds fantastic considering most book royalty deals are under 12%, but that 50% royalty doesn’t come into play UNTIL after the 250 pre-order mark or 750 pre-order mark. Why are there two milestone marks? Well, at 250 you can opt in to the Quill imprint which means they will technically print your book and put it on Amazon, but they aren’t going to put much marketing weight behind it or make too many copies. At the 750 mark they give you the full editing, marketing, cover design, promotion, distribution, etc etc (this would be worth it imo, but I’m not going to discuss this). The Quill imprint, which is where most authors will end up, would basically be like self-publishing. Let’s say you everybody in your family pre-orders your book so then your up to 50 pre-orders (generously). Now, half of your Facebook “friends” pre-order it getting you up to the 250. Yay, your book is going to get published… but is that a good thing?

Why a website? To promote myself. Gross, I know, but it is something I’m going to have to eventually do should I receive a modicum of success. So, I crawled out of my digital cave and updated my Facebook, created a Twitter account, and started this site. The reason for this? I have been accepted for publication by the Indianola Review. I can’t believe I’ve been sitting on over 150pgs of fiction and another 50 or so pages of humor/essays since I graduated from Goddard in 2013 because I thought I wasn’t “good enough” and insisted my writing “wasn’t ready” when, in reality, it may have been.

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Joe Portes is a writer of Fiction, Humor, and Essays, as well as a Writing Instructor at SUNY Adirondack. He received a Bachelor's degree in English - Creative Writing from SUNY Plattsburgh in 2010 then a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing from Goddard College in 2013. He has edited The Saranac Review, The Pitkin Review, and The Free George Magazine. His fiction, interviews, articles, and movie reviews have appeared in all three of the publications he's worked on and he has had writing published in the Indianola Review and Z-Platt literary journals.